In vSphere 5.0 and later, you can configure ESXi hosts to cache virtual machine disk data. This feature, called View Storage Accelerator, uses the Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) feature in ESXi hosts. View Storage Accelerator improves View performance during I/O storms, which can take place when many desktops start up or run anti-virus scans at once. The feature is also beneficial when administrators or users load
applications or data frequently.
Instead of reading the entire OS or application from the storage system over and over, a host can read common data blocks from cache.

By reducing the number of IOPS during boot storms, View Storage Accelerator lowers the demand on the storage array, which lets you use less storage I/O bandwidth to support your View deployment.

You enable caching on your ESXi hosts by selecting the View Storage Accelerator setting in the vCenter Server wizard in View Administrator, as described in this procedure.

Make sure that View Storage Accelerator is also configured for individual desktop pools. View Storage Accelerator is enabled for pools by default, but this feature can be disabled or enabled when you create or edit a pool. To operate on a pool, View Storage Accelerator must be enabled for vCenter Server and for the individual pool.

You can enable View Storage Accelerator on pools that contain linked clones and pools that contain full virtual machines.

View Storage Accelerator is also supported with local mode. Users can check out desktops in pools that are enabled for View Storage Accelerator. View Storage Accelerator is disabled while a desktop is checked out and reenabled after the desktop is checked in.

Native NFS snapshot technology (VAAI) is not supported in pools that are enabled for View Storage Accelerator.

View Storage Accelerator is now qualified to work in configurations that use View replica tiering, in which replicas are stored on a separate datastore than linked clones. Although the performance benefits of using View Storage Accelerator with View replica tiering are not materially significant, certain capacity-related benefits might be realized by storing the replicas on a separate datastore. Hence, this combination is tested and supported.

Prerequisites

■

Verify that your vCenter Server and ESXi hosts are version 5.0 or later.

In an ESXi cluster, verify that all the hosts are version 5.0 or later.

■

Verify that the vCenter Server user was assigned the Global > Act as vCenter Server privilege in vCenter Server. See the topics in the VMware Horizon View Installation documentation that describe View Manager and View Composer privileges required for the vCenter Server user.